Customers Bank CEO Sam Sidhu held a conference call to discuss first-quarter results with analysts on Friday. Halfway through the call, he revealed that he had not actually spoken at all. Instead, his speech had been delivered by an AI clone.
“The prepared remarks you heard on my behalf today were delivered by my AI clone, not read by me,” Sidhu said, according to a CNBC report. The CEO of Customers Bank called it a potential first for a public company earnings call.
Sidhu said the point of letting an AI clone handle the earnings call was to highlight the adoption of artificial intelligence at the bank, which recently entered into a partnership with OpenAI.
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OpenAI’s deal with Customers Bank
Customers Bank has entered into a multiyear partnership with OpenAI, with engineers from the AI company expected to work closely with the bank to help automate processes such as lending and customer onboarding, CNBC reported.
The bank is aiming to improve its efficiency ratio from about 49% to the low 40s. It also expects higher returns starting in 2027.
At the same time, it will co-develop financial tools with OpenAI that could later be sold to other banks, according to Customers Bank CEO Sam Sidhu.
“We’re going to be co-creating enterprise solutions they could potentially sell to other banks in the future,” Sidhu said. “The goal here is end-to-end, automated agentic led workflow” for lending, deposits and payments.”
What will the deal do?
The deal with OpenAI is part of CEO Sam Sidhu’s push to position Customers Bank ahead of other banks in using AI agents as a kind of digital workforce.
His plan focuses on automating key banking tasks, such as reducing loan processing times from weeks to just a few days. It also aims to support growth without needing to increase staff at the same rate.
Customers Bank is likely to introduce AI agents across its lending, deposits and payments businesses over the next six to 12 months.
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According to Sidhu, the technology could reduce the time needed to close a commercial loan from 30–45 days to about seven days. This includes processes such as underwriting, document collection and legal negotiations.
Customers Bank already uses AI to write half the firm’s software code. Doing so has saved 28,000 hours of work so far, equal to not hiring about 15 full-time employees, he said.
“This is an opportunity for us to potentially slow that hiring … and do more revenue per employee,” Sidhu said.